City Of Harare | School of Excellence opens for Undergraduates and PHD programmes

Harare’s School of Excellence will start offering Doctorate and undergraduate programmes in April. The School is a brainchild of City of Harare and is a first of its kind in the sub-Saharan region which offers tailor made programmes for local authorities. The school started in 2018 when Council and Zimbabwe Open University has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which was later elevated to Memorandum of agreement (MOA) in 2019. The Memorandum of Agreement was meant to outline specific deliverables that they wished to achieve under the agreement. Speaking on the inaugural graduation day ZOU’s Dean of Faculty of Commerce, Professor Tavonga Njaya said the Harare School of Excellence will be offering different programmes to the City's employees in a bid to build capacity on local governance, financial management and project management. “The school of excellence has already started publishing a journal which means that every decision made by the City should be informed by research which gives council room to implement recommendations from some of the research articles that are published in the journal,” he said. The school started by offering the Executive Diploma in Local Governance which is meant to build capacity in issues of financial management, local governing and entrepreneurship which will help the City of Harare to have functional and viable business unity. "Executive Diploma in Local Governance will actually built capacity on issues of financial management, local governing and entrepreneurship, This will help the City of Harare to have functional and viable business unity," Prof Njaya said. Paralegal studies are also on board as a way of developing legal capacity within the council. Project management courses are being offered to ensure that the implementation of various projects by the council projects are done according to the book and within specified schedules. The introduction of a short course in local governance will guarantee that council employees and councilors follow due process whenever they are implementing decisions from council. A short course in Monitoring and Evaluation programme is being introduced to enhance supervision of projects within the council The school is going to enrol 10 senior managers from the City who are going to take PHD studies in areas of Human Resources Management, Leadership Management as well as Project Management.